This Place is Empty

For 'This Place is Empty' I recorded the recurring guitar part with an NT1A placed about one foot away from the amplifier to get a more ambient sound and to give the guitars a warmer sound with more low end. I used the same microphone positioning for the shoegaze-style guitars at the end whilst using a combination of fuzz, distortion and reverse reverb effects pedals and an electric guitar with a tremolo arm which I manipulated whilst playing the chords to get this shoegaze sound. With the recording I tried to get everything sounding how I wanted before I began recording to reduce the amount of editing and mixing afterwards. I only used a CLA-2A compressor on the main vocal part and sent all the vocals to different reverb buses; the backing vocals were recorded by using two vocalists stood about a foot away from the NT1A and then sent fully to a bus with a very heavy reverb to get this ethereal sound I was looking for. I doubled up the shoegaze-style guitar and panned one left and one right with one completely unaffected and the other with compression and some EQ to give them both different sounds; I then sent them both to a stereo reverb bus to blend them into each other to get a more layered sound.  I didn't compress and EQ the drums because I liked how they sounded just put through a reverb bus. Artists like M83 and My Bloody Valentine were my main influences for this track.

Anna

For the track ‘Anna’, my inspiration was ‘Little Black Submarines’ by The Black Keys so I recorded the acoustic start by using the NT1A as a room microphone placed closer to the vocalist and then used an SM57 as a spot microphone for the acoustic guitar; I wanted to get quite a lo-fi feel for the track so I used minimal of processing and instead used microphone placement to get the right amount of reverb and EQ from the room. For the vocals in the latter half of the track I placed the NT1A about six inches away from the vocalist to let the room colour the sound and then compressed it lightly and used the Aphex Exciter to make the vocals stand out in the track. I used the Kramer Tape to saturate the vocals a bit and to also give them some tape delay. The drums were compressed with a shorter release than the previous track to make them sound tighter, used the Kramer Tape to give them a saturated sound and put them through a bus with a long reverb to make them really big. I used two different guitars for the guitar parts again to get two different sounds which made the mixing stage easier as I didn’t have to use any form of processing, other than a little bit of EQ to cut out some highs so they didn’t clash. I used the NT1A on one guitar part to bring out some of the lower frequencies and an SM57 on the lead guitar. I recorded the bass with an NT1A again but brought it a little further away from the amp to let the room leak into the recording. I used two iPhones to record some background noise to go with the track. 

Sightseeing

For the track ‘Sightseeing’, my main influence was The Black Keys for the instrumentation and Arctic Monkeys for the vocals. For the mix, I panned it all to represent a typical live band set up: vocals, bass and drums in the center and guitars panned left and right. I recorded the vocals using the NT1A with a pop shield but I also experimented with some of the dynamics as the vocals are quite rough and hard but I preferred the sound of the NT1A. When it came to mixing the vocals I used ‘Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not’ by the Arctic Monkeys as inspiration so I compressed them quite heavily using Waves’ CLA-2A and I took out frequencies below 200Hz and boosted around 4kHz; I used Waves’ Aphex Vintage Aural Exciter to give the vocals some clarity within the mix. I also sent them to a bus with a short plate reverb to give them some space. With the backing vocals I took out the higher frequencies and sent them to a different bus with a longer reverb to make them sit behind the main vocals. On the lead guitar, I recorded it using an SM57 placed slightly to the left of the middle of the cone to get quite a trebly sound and put the guitar through overdrive and distortion pedals. I used a noise gate to get rid of the hum and feedback from driving the amp and then boosted the frequencies at 3kHz to give the guitar some bite, took out frequencies below 80Hz to stop the mix from becoming muddy. I also put it through some heavy compression to make it sound more aggressive and used the Aphex Exciter to give it more clarity. Finally, I put it through Waves’ Kramer Tape which I set up to get a really saturated and driven sound to get a sound similar to ‘Lonely Boy’ by The Black Keys. For the rhythm guitar I used a different guitar, different pedals and a different microphone (PG57) to try and separate it from the other guitar. I used some EQ and the Aphex Exciter but didn’t use any compression as it was quite lacking in dynamics due to the use of distortion. For the bass guitar I used the NT1A as it gives a better bass response then compressed it and used EQ to bring out some bite and then used the Kramer Tape to give it a little bit of drive. I compressed the drums quite heavily with a long attack and release to get them to sound quite thrashy and used EQ to cut out frequencies that made them sound muddy and boosted frequencies to bring out the snare drum and the bass drum. I then used the Aphex Exciter to make it sound a little cleaner and to get it to sit in the mix better. The drums were then sent to a reverb bus to get more of the thrashy sound I was looking for.

I used the SM57 on the left to record one of the guitar parts.

Recording Drums

For all drum my recordings I used a technique known as the Glyn Johns technique. Glyn Johns has worked with Led Zeppelin, The Who, The Rolling Stones, The Eagles and Eric Clapton and was credited for “the monstrous John Bonham sounds on all those Zeppelin records” and only used four microphones to do it. This technique requires two spot microphones for the snare drum and bass drum and two condenser microphones used in a stereo set up. One of the condensers is placed to the left of the bass drum and up above the snare drum whilst the other condenser is set up to the right of the floor tom and above t by about 6 inches. Both of these microphones should be the same distance away from the snare drum due to phasing issues and then panned hard left and hard right. I recreated this by using an SM57 on the snare drum, the MB85 on the bass drum, the PG57 as the floor tom room microphone and the NT1A as the left hand microphone. I had to use a dynamic as one of the room microphones due to the fact I only had the one condenser microphone.

General Studio

I recorded the drums, the vocals and most of the guitar and bass parts in my studio which has several foam panels, bass traps and a carpeted floor to soundproof it. I used a Behringer Xenyx mixer and a Shure SM57, Shure PG57, The T.Bone MB85 and a Rode NT1A to record.

I also recorded some guitar and bass parts back at my flat which didn't have the soundproofing my studio had but was generally quite a nice room to record due to the high ceilings and the shape of the room.